Toyota's Diversity Initiative fails because American Women can't work without pills
06-19-2015, 10:06 AM
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/busine...icle-click
Interesting how the stereotypes we often repeat end up coming out in the news in one form or another. The 1/60th consumption statistic is particularly interesting if you consider that most of these pills are probably being consumed by American women similar to the one arrested in the article: middle-aged corporate/office drone types.
Wouldn't someone who was intelligent and able enough to be the global head of public relations for a large international company be able to do a little bit of research before attempting to traffic controlled substances internationally? I guess these pretend jobs don't require that kind of attention to detail.
Quote:Quote:
TOKYO — Toyota Motor was forthright, even proud, about why it promoted a group of foreign and female managers this spring: The automaker wanted more diversity in an executive suite dominated by Japanese men.
Now the company finds itself defending its efforts to change after one of the executives it promoted, an American woman, was arrested on charges of illegally bringing a restricted painkiller into Japan.
...
Toyota named Ms. Hamp, 55, its global head of public relations in March, elevating her from a similar position in North America. She is the first woman to reach a senior executive position at the company, and the first foreign executive to work for Toyota in Japan. She had joined Toyota from PepsiCo in 2012 and was still moving to Japan when she was arrested.
Mr. Toyoda added little detail to the outlines of Ms. Hamp’s case. The police said customs inspectors found tablets containing oxycodone, a powerful and potentially addictive painkiller, in a parcel she had sent to herself from the United States.
Oxycodone is legal in Japan if prescribed by a doctor, as it is in the United States, though doctors here are far more reluctant to recommend it. It can be imported for personal use only with special permission from the government, which the police said Ms. Hamp had not obtained.
Ms. Hamp was in custody and could not be contacted. She has not been formally charged; that decision can take up to several weeks in Japan, during which suspects often remain in jail.
According to Japanese news reports, Ms. Hamp is suspected of sending 57 tablets containing oxycodone from an address in Kentucky to a Tokyo hotel where she was staying while she looked for a home in Japan. She did not declare the tablets on the customs label, the reports said, only some plastic children’s necklaces that were also in the parcel.
Ms. Hamp told the police she was not aware that she had broken any laws, according to the reports.
Oxycodone is widely prescribed in the United States in the form of drugs like OxyContin and Percocet. But it is also widely abused. In Japan, it is usually reserved for extreme cases like pain from advanced cancer. Per capita consumption is one-sixtieth the American level, according to comparative statistics collected by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Interesting how the stereotypes we often repeat end up coming out in the news in one form or another. The 1/60th consumption statistic is particularly interesting if you consider that most of these pills are probably being consumed by American women similar to the one arrested in the article: middle-aged corporate/office drone types.
Wouldn't someone who was intelligent and able enough to be the global head of public relations for a large international company be able to do a little bit of research before attempting to traffic controlled substances internationally? I guess these pretend jobs don't require that kind of attention to detail.